


few can take a dying world and still with fondness fill it

by faridsgwi



Category: High Noon Over Camelot - The Mechanisms (Album), The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Fluff, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Multi, One big happy family out in the rust desert, Past Sexual Assault, Polyamory, Pre-Canon, Short One Shot, The inherent tenderness of caring for your lover's child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:46:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27577387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faridsgwi/pseuds/faridsgwi
Summary: A brief tale of Gawain and Ygraine and the Pendragons, years before the gunfight at the Dolorous Guard.Guinevere's whip-sharp protectiveness, Lancelot's quiet good humour, and all their combined skill with firepower helped, of course, but it was Arthur's steady, sensible manner that felt safest of all.
Relationships: Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot (High Noon Over Camelot), Arthur/Mordred's Mother (High Noon Over Camelot)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 40





	few can take a dying world and still with fondness fill it

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for canon-typical (in the Fiction rather than the album, mainly) allusion to past abuse in the rough life on the station. All events within the story itself are fluffy.
> 
> 'Ygraine' is Mordred and Gawain's mother, rather than Arthur's.

It'd been not quite a full three years since Arthur looted that rail gun of his off the Lady in the flooded sector, a little less since he'd found his stars and night in his lovers - though none of the three Pendragons liked to say when or how, and no amount of whiskey could coax the story from them. Yet it seemed as though it had been forever. Everything had changed, in that time. Everything was still changing.

Arthur and Guinevere and Lancelot had come together, most important of all, natural and inevitable as breathing, and them being decent folk and better shots, they'd attracted quite a stable following of travellers to protect. _Tintagel_ , some called the ragged bunch, after the corrugated tin roofs of their wagons. Mostly they just called it _our people_ and left it at that.

Late in among them had been Ygraine and her son, little Gawain all steely-eyed and wary despite his scarce years, quiet and watchful and never more than a few steps from his mother. She and Guinevere got along well (as much as anyone got along with Guinevere, who was sharper than a viper, and just as inclined to snap), neither having to say what they'd run from for the other to understand. And being Guin's friend meant you got more acknowledgment than the usual curt nod from Art and glance from Lance, for the Pendragons did nothing that wasn't together. A lot more, in the end. It was Arthur, of the three of them, that really took a shine to Ygraine.

Which led to her lying at the edge of their tangle of sweaty limbs and fond smiles on many an occasion. Apart from them, a little, but still a part of them, and happy enough there. They brought a certain kind of safety with them - and maybe she was biased, but Arthur's steady, sensible manner felt to her the safest of all, though Guinevere's whip-sharp protectiveness and Lancelot's quiet good humour, and all their combined skill with firepower contributed too, of course. So Ygraine decided that she wanted another child, if the Pendragons were willing. And the Pendragons told her that they were more than willing with a defanged verbal jab and a silent bear hug and a long slow kiss, respectively.

Young Gawain didn't understand why his mother would want another baby when all she seemed to do before they'd joined the wagon trail was avoid that fate like hell. In his brief experience, all folk who looked at her like Arthur did were bad news; someone to be ready to shriek for Ma if they touched him, or come running to help kiss a bruise better after they'd touched her. Folk like that was why they'd gone travelling in the first place, he knew. Gawain never slept well when she was off with the Pendragons. He was too little to really resist slumber, once he'd been tucked into his bedroll, but he fought it as best he could so he could stay vigilant for her.

Still, she never seemed to sob into his long hair or shake or talk about escape, the next mornings, the way she'd used to. And before Arthur had become _Ma's man_ he'd been the steadfast captain who let Gawain - from a 'safe distance', which was quite a way away if you were seven - take a long hard look at his antique rail gun and explained how it worked, considerate enough to use small words. Before Gawain had decided they were _accomplices_ , Guinevere and Lancelot had been the cool gunslingers who scared off the bandits and the ghouls and kept Tintagel defended. So maybe he really should _just drop it and be good to them_ , like his mother asked him, noting her son's white-knuckle grip on the edge of her duster whenever any of the three of them came near during the day. He wasn't so sure as he'd like to be.

Gawain came to his decision one night when the breeze caught up along the hollow of the station, turning day sweat into night chills and sending him shivering himself awake. No Ma lying beside him to snuggle close to. He'd just have to find her, then, he resolved, sleepy stubbornness winning out over mistrustful caution, and dragged himself up to stumble around to the cluster of bodies nearest the dying embers of the campfire.

Ygraine slept heavy, curled on her side away from him, and Gawain hesitated at her back and chewed his lip as he tried to puzzle out how to wake her without shocking her too bad - until he noticed a pair of eyes on the other side of her, watching him.

Arthur had always dreamed horribly; just now that he was a man, he had more fuel for it than childish phantasms, and if he was reluctant to let himself fall into the grip of his drowning nightmares then that was nothing more than a rational decision. He often lay awake in his lovers' arms far too long.

When Gawain noticed him looking he only jumped a tiny bit, for Arthur's gaze held no anger at all, merely a silent question. He hesitated, then hugged himself tight and licked his dry lips and whispered,

"Cold."

Arthur's brow smoothed out in understanding, and he shifted up on one elbow a little, carefully not moving any part of his body that Ygraine had her head pillowed on, nor at his back that Lancelot was pressed up against, and held his hand out in an encouragement.

Now Gawain was not a coward, even at such a tender age, but he had mustered up all his courage to say why he had come, and perhaps joining this grown-up almost-stranger outlaw king in a place of vulnerability was a little too much to ask of him. But as Arthur realised this and began to lower his hand, the wind blew again, biting, and Gawain's mind was made up for him by instinct - for freezing at night would just as surely kill you on the rust-sea as overheating in the day. He hurriedly picked his way over the haphazard pile of legs and clambered into the hollow between Ygraine and Arthur, allowing Arthur to snatch up two of the threadbare blankets that had already been dislodged and wrap him snugly in them.

"There," Arthur said, more to himself than anything, voice gruff with tiredness. He remembered his foster-brother used to do the same to him, in the quiet peace of a childhood long-distant now; _like a scrawny little burrito_ , Kay had teased, mussing his hair while Arthur's arms were swaddled too tight to stop him. "You good in there?"

Gawain nodded clumsily, content to let himself be folded in beside his mother and, suddenly cosier than he could ever remember being, fall almost immediately unconscious.

Roused by all the shuffling, Lancelot cracked open one eye, cat-like, curious.

"Said he was cold." Arthur muttered softly. If Gawain truly was as asleep as he seemed then he could stay that way, and if the boy was better at acting than he should have had to be then he could hear that Arthur wasn't mad.

Lancelot hooked his chin up over Arthur's shoulder and kissed his cheek. For all that Arthur had the air of a leader, he'd never been tall. _You'll be a good father_ , Lance would have said, if he was the type to talk like that or Art the type to listen, which they weren't. _You do deserve that scrap of trust he's showing you and more_. Guin was more direct, would have been better at saying it, but there was no need to shake their still loosely entwined hands and wake her to tell Arthur what he really ought to figure out for himself. Ygraine's belly was beginning to swell.

The next morning they'd assuage all three sets of doubts (Arthur's, Gawain's, Ygraine's) real efficient, because Guin had taken one look at the child she'd found snoring half atop Arthur's arm and decided he needed a hat if he was going to be walking around in the heat, stole Lance's, and smirked at Gawain's confused delight when she shoved it on his head and it fell over his eyes.

"He'll grow into it," shrugged Arthur at Ygraine's sideways look, deadpan failing to conceal the small smile tugging at the edges of his lips.

They would turn their minds to Camelot in a few years. The Saxons were getting bolder, and with Ygraine and Arthur's ~~daughter~~ barely more than a toddler and Gawain growing into a reckless teen, they badly needed somewhere properly defensible.

(Gawain would lose that hat somewhere on the frantic ride that was never going to be fast enough to save the caravan.)

But that was all in the future. As of then, the Pendragons found that they had earned the undying loyalty of the kid. For better or for worse.


End file.
